...<snip>... By never practicing your technique against resistive opponents, you are short selling yourself. When you actually meet a resistive attack in real confrontation, you are likely to freeze up, and not respond, you will lose the "softness", that you've been training!
-Chris Hein

Chris,

From your post, I know you advocate resistant and vigour in one's MA training. This is a good Endeavour; however I think you are a lost puppy barking up the wrong tree.

Many folks here and millions of Aikido practitioner in this modern age are your average Joe and Joan who has got a regular 9 - 5 jobs. To train to be effective basing on your standards, mean they will have to do it full- time, professionally with proper coach etc. That is what the MMA fellows have at their disposal... full time and pro coach.

If you are such a big fan of MMA competition, there are specific MMA forum which you can find more like minded people to share your thoughts.

To be effective on the street is simple, train like you are fighting on a street. Having said that, such training is no fun, it is dangerous to a normal Joe and Joan whom injury means a loss to their livelihood/routine.

Think about the normal people, after a hard days work, dragging their tired ass off to a dojo is chore enough, asking them to do full contact type training? Such dojo will not be very attractive IMO... Let's talk reality here Chris, forget about your romantic notion of super-fighter wannabee attitude.

Being from a school which does not have competition, maybe you feel you have something missing in your MA pursuit, then try Tomiki-ryu. Those folks do contact full resistant randori competition. There is always something for everyone.

Quote:

So my question is why more Aikidoka don't practice against resistive attacks. Why is there not really any sparring* in Aikido

Because we don't have to. Folks who want to compete have so many different arts to choose from... Boxing, Muay Thai, Judo, TKD, Karate etc... Some of us folks here see aikido as an avenue to study budo, some see it as a form of shugyo, personal development, a hobby, an alternate and healthy lifestyle to our mundane 9 -5 desk-job. So again, I reiterate, you are a lost puppy who is barking at the wrong tree. To make it clearer just in case you are not sure what I mean... there are MMA specific forum where you can find more like minded people like yourself.

An analogy: There are amateur guitarists who learn it to play for fun and for self satisfaction. There also pro guitarist who does it for a living like the legend Jimmy Hendrix. Maybe you want to be a Jimmy Hendrix in the MA way, which is fine. It should also be fine for people who want to only learn it for personal enjoyment. You can't criticize them for staying as amateur.

Just to digress, just recently one of my dojo lads, an 18 y/o, 160 cm, 50 kg young shodan successfully defeated three bullies/extortionist entirely on his own at school when those bullies tried to extort money from my dojo lad. He refused; they ganged up on him. He applied his dojo knowledge on that situation. When we asked him further... he said it was just like the routine san nin dori jiyu waza we do in our normal class. You said jiyu waza is an ineffective learning tool for street use? Think again.

Boon.

P/S: This post is in respond to your thread and how I interpret what you mean. If should I interpret it incorrectly from what you tried to actually mean, I apologize in advance.